Positive Leadership: Listening

Positive Leadership: Listening

Positive Leadership: The Power of Listening

Tom Peters uses an example from the healthcare industry to highlight the importance of listening. 

According to Tom, "the single most significant strategic strength that an organisation can have is not a good strategic plan, but a commitment to strategic listening on the part of every member of the organisation."

Positive Leadership: The Power of Listening

Positive Leadership: Focus on Employees' Strengths and Potential (Not on Their Weaknesses)

It is much easier to focus on what your employees do well than to try to fix their weaknesses. However, many leaders don’t understand how to translate this truth into how they lead on a day-to-day basis. So how do you make it happen?

Understanding your employees’ potential is going to take some energy and thought on your part, especially if, like many of us, you’re used to focusing on what people are rather than what they could be. 

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Can they do something well that isn’t in their formal training or experience?
• Compare them to others with the same experience—are they doing anything faster or better?
• Do they appear to enjoy certain projects more than others?
• What kind of work do they show the most ownership for?
• What kind of work do they need the least guidance from you to do?
• What have they produced that has genuinely surprised you?
• Once you’ve identified employees’ strengths, take a few minutes in your next one-on-one meeting to tell them what they’re doing especially well, or to describe the potential you see in them in a particular area. Get their perspective. Do they know what they’re good at? How can you help them leverage those strengths? Do what you can, but then get out of the way! 

Now, here are a few practical suggestions to help you bring out hidden strengths in your team members:

• Ask them what they like about their job and what they are less enthusiastic about. Make a list. Add the strengths in them that you see that they have not listed. Discuss how—or whether—these strengths map onto their current job or role.
• Even when giving corrective feedback, talk about the strengths you see in them.
• Instead of viewing them as a problem employee, take the approach that there has to be something they do well and it’s your job to help them find it.
• See whether you can structure the job around their strengths.
• If you can’t offer them a job or project that plays to their strengths, consider whether the employee might thrive in another part of the company.

The lesson is simple: Spend your time and energy developing your employees’ strengths and limit your effort to address their shortcomings; in these weak areas, they need only be passable. This is not the same as saying that you should ignore weaknesses completely. In fact, one of the most important aspects of Positive Leadership is acting swiftly and decisively in the face of poor performance. Nevertheless, even in this situation you must focus more time and energy on developing your team’s strengths.

Once you discover the individual strengths of your employees and provide them with appropriate coaching, you’ll set them on the course to develop their true potential. This will benefit both parties!

Positive Leadership: Focus on Employees' Strengths and Potential (Not on Their Weaknesses)

Positive Leadership: How to Learn?

Human beings are learning animals, probably the most efficient learning machine ever to have walked the earth.  From birth we are programmed to alter our behaviour depending on our desires and the feedback we are receiving from the environment.  Our success as a species is largely down to how efficiently we learn and change our behaviour, depending on circumstances.

So, if the learning process is so natural and normal, why do we find it so hard sometimes to change our behaviour and learn new skills, especially new motor skills and movement patterns?

Something seems to have gone wrong with the way we learn, we seem to have got in the way of the natural process and made it much harder than it needs to be.

Rather than focus on the acquisition of the new skill as a starting point, perhaps it would be better if the first stage of the learning journey was to reconnect with and understand exactly how we go about acquiring and developing that new skill, whether it’s a golf swing, playing a musical instrument or tiling a bathroom.

In his books, ‘The Talent Code’, and ‘The Little Book ofTalent’, author Daniel Coyle goes into great detail into the learning process, and offers some great insights into how to get the most from your tuition and practice, and how to work with the natural learning process rather than fighting against it. 

Here are a few of the key points he raises.

1.  Repetition is the absolute Number 1 key to successful motor skill acquisition.

It takes about 3000 repetitions of a movement for the body to ‘get it’, 10000 reps for it to become a habit.  That’s why a couple of hours a week down the driving range might be fun, but it isn’t really helping your golf swing to become a consistent, repeatable movement.

2.  We learn most by failing.

You need to fail to learn.  Instead of berating yourself and feeling angry and disappointed when you hit a bad shot, pause for a second.  Open your mind.  What actually happened there?  What did it feel like?  What was the difference in feeling between that and a good one?  Your mistakes are the big opportunities.  Make them count.

3. Break it down into small pieces.

When learning a large and complex movement such as the golf swing, it really helps to break it down into ‘chunks’. Work on small pieces of the movement, such as the takeaway, transition or impact, and focus tightly on that specific part of the movement, repeating it over and over until it is perfect. Then integrate it into the overall movement.

4. Little and often is better than feast and famine.

Sitting down once a week and saying “Right, I’m going to practice my grip for the next hour” very rarely works, for the simple reason that it’s dull, repetitive and unlikely to hold our attention for that length of time. Within a few minutes we’ll get distracted and any opportunity for learning will be limited.  Much better to say “Right, I’m going to grip the club perfectly 20 times” then leave it an go and do something else, coming back after a while, then doing 20 more perfect reps.

5. Play games, make it fun!!

In the same way that a little and often is better than feast and famine, playing games rather than doing drills, is an excellent way to make practice engaging and enjoyable.  Whether it’s competing with a friend to get it up and down, or challenging yourself to hole 20 consecutive 3 footers, or hit 10 drivers in the fairway, making practice into a game keeps it from becoming ‘work’. Most of us play golf for fun, and while we all want to improve, turning it into work is rarely the way forward.

Positive Leadership: How to Learn?

Positive Leadership: 9 Attributes That Differentiate CEOs

Becoming a CEO is the greatest leap that an executive can make in his or her career. What makes it such an extraordinary transition, of course, is the complexity of the role and the skill that is required to manage that complexity successfully. So, what exactly do CEOs have that other leaders don’t?

To answer that question—and, by doing so, help aspiring CEOs optimise their trajectories and assist current CEOs and boards in making better CEO succession planning decisions—Russell Reynolds Associates analysed its database of nearly 4,000 executive assessments, including over 130 CEOs. These tests measure a number of competencies, such as relationship skills, communication skills and decision-making approaches. 

Their findings reaffirm with quantitative evidence what is perceived to be true about the capabilities that differentiate CEOs from non-CEOs.

For more, see: http://www.russellreynolds.com/content/making-it-top-nine-attributes-differentiate-ceos

Positive Leadership: 9 Attributes That Differentiate CEOs

Positive Leadership: Why Listening is So Important for Leaders

According to research from Columbia Business School, expressing yourself well in combination with listening well makes you more influential than would be expected by simply adding these two skills together.

While there are no real secrets to being a better listener, there are some behaviours that can take effort to change. 

Here are a few suggestions for influential listening:

Don’t follow your instincts - at least not always. Listening is sometimes most valuable when it clashes with your instincts and impulses. In a conflict, when someone is disagreeing with you and you really don’t want to hear them out, that is exactly when listening is most useful.

Capture your own attention - Listening is difficult in part because we have a lot of brain capacity, we can process language at 300 to 500 words per minute. But most people speak around 100 words per minute. So we have extra capacity that makes it challenging to manage our attention — instead we look at the person walking across a room or consider an idea bubbling up in our minds. One way to manage your own attention is to put that extra capacity to work by making more effort to draw out your counterpart through questions or to organise in your own mind the points they are making.

Stop interrupting - For just one week, every time you want cut off another person and forge ahead with your own point, wait. Instead, ask a question. It is a way to reflect on your habits and to get more out of others by understanding their points more completely.

....But don’t be quiet - The gold standard of good listening is not measured by how quiet you are. It’s about doing things to let the other person know that you are seriously considering what he has to say. Elicit information, ask questions, make direct eye contact, and whatever you do, don’t engage in other activities while you claim to be listening.

Implement - The real litmus test is what you do after the conversation. The most persuasive thing a manager can do is to implement what people are saying. The rule should be that as long as others’ recommendation is not worse than what you as a manager would do — you should not hold your staff to a higher standard than you hold yourself — then act on their suggestion. Otherwise you’re losing an opportunity to show that you are good listener and to build relationships and trust. And if the idea is worse? You still need to come back with a reasonable explanation in a way that lets the recipient know his views were seriously considered.

For more, see: https://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/ideasatwork/feature/7228935/Hear+and+Be+Heard# 

Positive Leadership: Why Listening is So Important for Leaders

Positive Leadership: Preparing to Lead

Potential CEO candidates should seek out CEO-calibre experiences before they need it. 

Here are three tips that will make you a better senior leader, strengthen you as a CEO candidate and serve you well if you get the nod:

Stop doing more of the same. Staying in your current role longer isn't the key to readiness. Nor is round after round of career moves that build on what you already do well. Honestly assess your weak spots, identify skills you need and seek out challenges or roles that fill those gaps. If you need strategic planning experience, step up to lead the company's scenario planning efforts. If you need more international experience, lobby to lead the company's entry into a new geographic market. Note that you need to learn and lead as you go — the ability to succeed in unfamiliar territory is an essential CEO skill.

Learn to take a direct hit. Until you are CEO, you have someone else to absorb some of the shock of a poor strategic decision or an operational problem. For CEOs, the shock absorber is gone. No one else can share the blame for poor performance. To get a sense of this, make sure you are taking personal responsibility for key, high-profile initiatives. Can you own the work without micromanaging it? Can you take the hits rather than looking for cover?

Learn how to work with a Board of Directors. Few CEO candidates understand board dynamics, so start learning now by taking leadership roles on boards of local non-profits. Ask your boss or mentor to help you gain a corporate board post where you can use your expertise, but also gain new experience and perspectives. And if you are on the short list of potential CEOs for your company, find ways to get to know individual board members: work with them on committee projects, play host when they visit your site, join them on trips to other company locations, ask for a walk-through of their own business. Understanding different board members' experiences, perspectives and personalities will give you insight into the demands facing the CEO.

Positive Leadership: Preparing to Lead

Positive Leadership: Courageous Leaders Apologise!

We are frequently taught that leaders, especially aspiring leaders, should hide weaknesses and mistakes. This view is flawed. It is not only good to admit you are wrong when you are; but also it can also be a powerful tool for leaders—actually increasing legitimacy and, when practiced regularly, can help to build a culture that actually increases solidarity, innovation, openness to change and many other positive features of organisational life.

Positive Leadership: Courageous Leaders Apologise!

Positive Leadership: The Role of Imagination in Leadership

Fast Company's website 30secondmba.com is a great source of short video insights on leadership, business success, teamwork and innovation from some of today’s top business people. This "advice from the trenches" is a wealth of easily digestible information and a font of real experience.

One headline that caught our attention was the role of imagination in leadership. Senior leaders from Intel, DreamWorks and Current TV among others give their version as to how imagination is crucial to good leadership. 


Imagination allows leaders to see opportunities and obstacles that others can't, it fosters collaboration and creativity, and it creates energy, all of which lead to motivation. Imagination fuels success and a winning attitude. Imagination gives us the courage to wonder 'what if'.

Positive Leadership: The Role of Imagination in Leadership

Positive Leadership: How to be a Good Boss

Positive Leadership: How to be a Good Boss

Positive Leadership: What makes a Great Leader?

What makes a great leader?  Here are three alternatives to consider:

Someone who has managed to overcome any weaknesses that she may have had.

Someone who is really well rounded and good at a large number of things.

Someone who is exceptionally good at a relatively small number of leadership competencies.

While there are good things to say about each of the alternatives above, the research is quite clear.  The last choice is the hands-down winner. Extraordinary leaders are those who possess and regularly utilise three or more powerful strengths.  There are those who have believed that there are other ways to get there. 

However, the data suggests that the first two items above simply do not work: 

Not possessing any failings or faults. 

(This is a bit complicated, because it is also true that extraordinary leaders most certainly have some failings and flat sides, but they don’t possess fatal flaws.)  You just can’t be awful at some leadership competency and still succeed in being a highly effective leader.

We all know horror stories about bad bosses.  These range from the boss who screams, shouts, berates and throws things across the room; to bosses who will never make a decision or take responsibility for their actions.  A currently popular TV show, The Office, painfully spoofs a bad boss who totally lacks self-awareness and constantly engages in highly inappropriate interactions with his subordinates. 

But let’s assume for a moment that we could eradicate these really bad behaviours. Would that create an inspiring, highly motivating leader?  The answer is obviously “No”.  Simply removing inappropriate behaviour brings you to ground zero.

Being exceedingly well rounded and good at the great majority of leadership competencies.

(Yes, that’s also better than not being good at a wide variety of leadership competencies.  But that does not cut it either.)

In most larger organisations that have existed for a decade or more, there is some very pleasant, generally well-liked manager who is also known as “good old ______.” (You can fill in the name.)  He doesn’t initiate new projects.  Or his group is performing adequately, but not brilliantly.  Nothing stands out about this individual, nor the performance of the group they lead.

We trust that this will be an encouraging message to most readers.

Why?

Because it says that a person doesn’t need to be outstanding at a wide range of competencies in order to be highly effective in a leadership role.

Instead, being really effective at a small number of competencies is all that is required.  Better yet, it doesn’t seem to make much difference which ones these are.  A wide variety of combinations work.  If someone is at the 90th percentile at displaying high integrity and honesty, and along with that also is at the 90th percentile at taking initiative, then 91% of the time that person will be in the top 10% of all leaders in their organisation.  The same thing is true for someone who communicates powerfully and prolifically and also sets stretch goals with the team that they manage, only their odds increase to 94% of the time. 

Positive Leadership: What makes a Great Leader?

Positive Leadership: Failure of Leadership among UK Bosses

Most British bosses do not exhibit the key skills of good communication, integrity and the ability to motivate, a survey of just over 1,000 UK employees by executive recruitment business Korn/Ferry Whitehead Mann has found.

Being a good communicator was the quality most commonly associated with an effective leader among the survey sample, but just 21 per cent felt their boss had this skill. A mere 13 per cent felt their boss was a good motivator, although this was seen as the second most important attribute for effective management.

Only 14 per cent of those asked felt their company head had integrity and 9 per cent felt their boss was inspirational.

There was an acceptance that the portrayal of business leaders on television and in films did not help raise their image among staff with 29 per cent saying that the reputation of bosses was diminished by their media portrayal compared with just 10 per cent who said it enhances it.

Positive Leadership: Failure of Leadership among UK Bosses

Positive Leadership: Enemies Define Our Leadership

Positive Leadership: Enemies Define Our Leadership

Positive Leadership: Will Smith on Leadership and Other Inspiring Thoughts

Positive Leadership: Will Smith on Leadership and Other Inspiring Thoughts

Positive Leadership: The Power of Leadership Quotes

Leadership quotes are leadership tools that inspire us. Studies have shown that leadership quotes have made a positive impact in our day-to-day life. They are considered as one of the best leadership tools. These inspirational words awaken your potential. Leadership quotes are one-line statements but their meaning is vast and impact is immense. These words not only inspire but also promote personal development.

Leadership quotes are the right words that are delivered at right time and in a right way.  They can change your negative attitude and transform your problems into opportunities. Leadership quotes can give you strategy to solve your problems. These words help to stay focused in your work. Leadership quotes will encourage and inspire you to achieve higher goals. If you use leadership quotes in a speech, it will have a greater impact on the audience. Leadership quotes will help the speaker to effectively communicate with the audience. Strong leaders use leadership quotes for effective leadership. They use it as a tool to support their strategy, vision and mission. 

Leadership quotes are like pearls of wisdom. It is up to you, to find vision in leadership quotes. A leadership quote if implemented can transform your life positively. Leadership quotes can tell you how to be successful in life.

Positive Leadership: The Power of Leadership Quotes

Games Promoting Positive Leadership

How can games influence middle-level managers in their work? Byron Reeves, founder of Media X at Stanford, discusses an IBM sponsored study on how a game such as World of Warcraft can foster leadership skills. Listen to his groundbreaking findings.

Games Promoting Positive Leadership

Positive Leadership: Do You Have The Skill Set To Be A Good Leader?

Are you responsible for implementing and facilitating change for your entire organisation or for a small team?  Are you achieving your leadership goals—both personally and for your organisation? Take our short quiz to find out…

If you are a leader who is responsible for implementing and facilitating change within your organisation you need to:

• ensure that an adequate change management plan is in place
• be able to determine where people are in the transition process
• help stakeholders to let go of the “old way” of doing things, adopt new processes, and define clear endings for the change/transition that is being implemented
• create and implement effective strategies to facilitate the beginning, neutral, and ends of change/transition. 

If you are a leader that is responsible for employing specific leadership behaviours into your organisation, you need to:

• learn how to identify yourself within certain behavioural statements
• be adept in identifying competency statements, and making them behavioural statements
• learn methods for validating your leadership competency models for your organisation
• understand how to measure the intangible—that is behaviour.

 If you are a leader that is responsible for gauging your organisation’s emotional thermostat while achieving leadership goals, you need to:

• gain insight into your leadership style, in order to drive change on a macro level
• be aware of coaching strategies that will allow you and others to achieve their professional and personal best
• learn how to mold micro-initiatives into missions that will have a macro-impact. 

Did you pass the test? Are you competent in your areas of responsibilities? 

Positive Leadership: Do You Have The Skill Set To Be A Good Leader?

Earning Respect

Respect is not something that is bestowed upon you.  Respect is earned.

If you have ever had to remind someone that you are in charge; if you have ever had to resort to using the words, "Because I said so;" or if you have ever wondered why your colleagues just aren't listening to you, you need to take a step back and ask yourself if you have worked to earn their respect.

Respect is the ultimate reward for your continued leadership efforts. If you can consistently demonstrate the following behaviours then you’re on the fast track to earning the respect you seek:

• Treat People As if They Are #1 - Leaders focus on making others feel as if they are a top priority.  That means putting down the blackberry, making eye contact and taking the time to really listen to your colleagues’ ideas and concerns.   When you can genuinely communicate in word and deed that you value others, you lay the foundation for a relationship built on trust and respect.
• Be Predictable - Leaders earn respect when they consistently bring calm to chaos, harness their emotions during stressful times, and bring perspective to challenging circumstances.  When you show others that you can be counted on time and time again, even when times are tough, others will look to you and rely on your positive example.
• Lead As You Are - Leaders recognise that life is not a popularity contest.   When you have the courage to be who you are – projecting your strengths, improving upon your weaknesses – then you inspire trust, confidence and respect.
• Demonstrate Integrity in All that You Do - Respected leaders are those who are able to tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. They are able to praise positive results, and also able to deliver bad news when it is needed. When you rely upon your integrity to communicate with honesty, compassion, sincerity and directness, you will earn the respect of others.

If you can work to improve upon these four behaviours, you will discover that earning respect will have a profound impact on your leadership abilities.

Earning Respect

The Capacities of Great Leaders

1. Great leaders recognise strengths in us that we don't always yet fully see in ourselves.

2. Rather than simply trying to get more out of us, great leaders seek to understand and meet our needs, above all a compelling mission beyond our immediate self-interest, or theirs.

3. Great leaders take the time to clearly define what success looks like, and then empower and trust us to figure out the best way to achieve it.

4. The best of all leaders — a tiny fraction — have the capacity to embrace their own opposites, most notably vulnerability alongside strength, and confidence balanced by humility.

For more, see: http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/10/the-four-capacities-every-grea.html

The Capacities of Great Leaders

Lack of Management Skills Hitting UK Competitiveness

The UK is suffering from a leadership and management skills deficit which is hitting the country’s competitiveness, according to the CIPD.

Responding to the government’s Skills for Sustainable Growth consultation, the institute said that much of the public spending on skills is failing to have the desired effect because of poor management is hitting employees’ motivation and engagement. On the other hand, good management could have a “skills multiplier effect” that would boost capability across the board.

Stephanie Bird, CIPD director of public policy and HR capability, said: ‘we are concerned that too much spending on skills – by government and employers alike – is being wasted because managers lack the skills to engage, motivate, coach and develop people in the workplace.’

Bird pointed out that the UK invests less in management development than its main international competitors and that its managers are rated less positively by employees.

“This is clearly a shared problem which requires action by both employers and government,” said Bird. “However, government can play a powerful role in ‘nudging’ investment in leadership and people management skills. Such investment is crucial if we are to unlock the wasted skills spending and individual potential that is holding Britain back in the productivity stakes.”

For more, see: http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2010/09/uk-lack-of-management-skills-hitting-competitiveness-warns-cipd.htm

Lack of Management Skills Hitting UK Competitiveness